2017 Otherwise Fellowships

2017 Otherwise Award Fellowships Winners

We are pleased to announce the selection of two Otherwise Fellows: H. Pueyo and Shelley Parker-Chan.

H. Pueyo is a South American writer and occasional comic artist. Born in Brazil to an Argentine father and a Brazilian mother, she is of Uruguayan descent. During her childhood and teen years, she has lived or stayed in many different cities, including Barcelona, Brasília, and Buenos Aires.

Pueyo writes that her “ambitions with writing genre fiction are mostly focused on bringing Latin American culture and realities to a broader, international audience inside the speculative (and sometimes literary) fiction market.” She notes that her writing themes vary, “but usually include subjects close to home, such as multiculturalism in Latin America, uncomfortably violent things, multiracial backgrounds, and her family’s spiritual beliefs”. Her work has been published in several comic anthologies, and magazines such as Mad Scientist Journal, Luna Station Quarterly, FLAPPERHOUSE, and Bourbon Penn, among others. Her fellowship will support improvements to her workspace, which will improve her quality of life and ability to freelance and write.

Shelley Parker-Chan writes genderbending historical fiction about Chinese emperors, Mongol warriors, and tormented eunuch generals. Also, occasionally, lesbians in space.

An Australian by way of Malaysia and New Zealand, Parker-Chan is currently finishing her first novel, She Who Became the Sun, which she describes as “a genderbending alt-history that takes male-centered, male-authored Chinese imperial history and makes it defiantly queer.” She writes:

“First and foremost, I wrote this book for myself and people like me. It is a story for members of the English-speaking Chinese diaspora who so rarely see respectful portrayals of themselves in Western-published speculative fiction. It is for queer audiences who have been denied queerness in the global phenomenon of East Asian TV dramas. And it is for Western audiences who might only have experienced the Asian crossdressing trope in Disney’s Mulan, but are compelled by the thought of the epic rise to power of a queer protagonist.”

Parker-Chan will use her fellowship to access formal language studies to gain a strong understanding of Chinese grammar to inform the dialogue in her work.

The Fellowship Committee also awarded honorable mentions to Julian K. Jarboe and Lilliam Rivera.

The Otherwise Fellowship program, now in its third year, is designed to provide support and recognition for the new voices who are making visible the forces that are changing our view of gender today. Each Fellow will receive $500. The work produced as a result of this support will be recognized and promoted by the Otherwise Award.

Over time, the Fellowship program will create a network of Fellows who can build connections, provide mutual support, and find opportunities for collaboration. This effort will complement the on-going work of the Award — that is, the celebration of speculative fiction that expands and explores gender roles in thought-provoking, imaginative, and occasionally infuriating ways.

The members of the 2017 selection committee for the Otherwise Fellowships were the 2016 Otherwise Fellows, Mia Sereno and Porpentine Charity Heartscape; Otherwise winner Pat Schmatz; and Motherboard member Gretchen Treu.

If you would like to donate to the fund for future Otherwise Fellowships, you can do so here. Let us know if you would like your donation to support the Fellowships program specifically.

To read about the work of our previous Fellows, click on their names below.